Punishing Katrina-related contractor fraud: An editorial

Contractors who stole from hurricane victims trying to rebuild their homes deserve stiff punishment, but Cecelia Slattery faces especially tough consequences for defrauding storm victims in a modular house scheme. That's partly because even after she was caught and facing conviction, she didn't stop scamming.

Cecelia Slattery was sentenced to 35 years in prison for defrauding several people in a post-Katrina modular home scam.

The 61-year-old businesswoman had agreed to a plea deal that might have kept her out of jail if she repaid $200,000 that she had taken from 10 victims. But Ms. Slattery didn't show up for an August hearing. When she got a phone call from the courtroom, she claimed that she was at the bank waiting for a wire transfer. The following day, she failed to show up in court again and disappeared.

It's not surprising that Judge Robin Pittman decided to hand down a tough sentence: seven five-year sentences, which she will have to serve consecutively. That means Ms. Slattery faces 35 years behind bars.

That's not the stiffest sentence for post-Katrina fraud. Judge Darryl Derbigny gave former Alabama lawmaker John Wesley Colvin 60 years for six counts of theft in another modular house scam. An appeals court found that excessive, and he will be resentenced Oct. 27.

In Ms. Slattery's case, Judge Pittman gave the defendant half the maximum in each case. The only mitigating circumstances, Judge Pittman said, was her guilty plea.

"Ms. Slattery, you knew or should have known that the victims in each and every one of these cases were particularly vulnerable to you,'' the judge said.

Indeed, victims testified about how she conned them. "She befriended me, hoodwinked me, bamboozled me,'' said 75-year-old widow Yvonne Netters, who gave Ms. Slattery $50,000 for pilings, permits and other work on her property in eastern New Orleans. She now has a pile of dirt there and nothing more.

Another victim was more succinct "you look good in orange,'' she said.